Aaron Elson went to a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion, with which his father served, in 1987. Two years later, he went to another reunion with a tape recorder. He's been preserving veterans' stories ever since.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

A Letter From a German Wife to Her Soldier Husband

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The destroyer USS Butler (DD-636)

The American War Orphans Network is a wonderful group, and has helped many Americans deal with the loss of a parent in World War II. I often wondered if there were a similar organization in Germany. Quite a few years ago I asked a German veteran if such a group existed, and the answer was no. I recently called Felix Podolak, a "Tin Can Sailor" who served on the USS Butler, to ask his permission to use his 1994 interview in my forthcoming book "Conversations With D-Day Veterans." In the interview, Felix mentioned that he had a buddy on the ship, Gus Siebert, who made two copies of a history of the Butler, one for Gus, the other for Felix. The book contained a translation of a letter from a German wife to her husband. There is no indication whether the husband lived or died, or even who he was, as the letter was found in a gun emplacement on one of the invasion beaches, and the soldier's name, as well as the last few lines of the letter, were too smudged by water damage to be legible. Here's an excerpt from that conversation:

Felix Podolak: I had a chance
to meet my captain through the Tin Can Sailors. I met him over a drink, and he
was gonna be the guest speaker. So I said, “Do you remember that time we had to
go chase that British cruiser that was off the Azores?” And there was another
incident when we were in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I came off leave from Garfield to the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, and when I got there, the fellow came down from the yard gang, he wanted
to know if he could pump out the No. 2 magazine, in the forward part of the
ship. They felt somebody sabotaged the ship, flooded the forward part of the
magazine because we were supposed to leave the next day.

When we got to
Algiers the captain called me into his quarters, and he had a tape recorder. He
recorded everything. He got down to maybe there was some sabotage. After the
questioning, he said, “Podolak, maybe the FBI will pick you up to question you,
but as far as I know now, you didn’t have nothing to do with it, you came off
liberty.” So during the speech he said, “Podolak can sleep a lot better now, he
won’t have to worry about the FBI picking him up.” That was about 30 or 40
years later, but he made a joke out of it. He was a terrific captain.

Gus made this
book for him and me, there’s only two like it, it’s a history of the ship. Gus was on the
forward repair party with me.

The captain went
ashore. In one of the pillboxes he found a letter, this fellow out of the
pillbox was supposed to write to his wife but it was wet and dirty, and Gus
speaks German. He interpreted everything, and this is what the guy was writing
to his wife in Germany. This is what we picked up, it’s in here somewhere, this
is the communique. Gus being of German descent, he spoke very fluent. In
Palermo they were bombing us, and Gus had a chance to be the interpreter for a
German pilot that we picked out of the water, in Sicily.

Aaron Elson: Is this the letter here? (Reading): “When Captain
Matthews came back from his trip to Cherbourg, he called me to his cabin and
showed me a letter he’d found in one of the German gun emplacements there. He
asked what it was. It was a letter from a German wife to her soldier husband.
He asked if I could translate it for him. The envelope had a return address but
water had blurred the ink, making it impossible to read, and the letter had the
last few lines and the signature also blurred. ‘My dear Ewald and my dear
father. ...

"‘My dear good
Ewald, it is Friday morning, half past eight. Want to hurry and write you a
nice letter. I received your dear letter yesterday and was very happy to hear
from you my love, and to have heard what you did Easter Day. But now I know
that you have seen the great lovers on the screen and yet you didn’t mention a
bit about love in your letter. What do you do in your visits to the movies? Do
you sleep while the picture is on? With whom do you usually go out, or do you
go out alone.

'Dear Ewald, when you write, please don’t complain about your food
openly. Just because your officers receive better food than you do, remember,
you’re the dumb one when you start to get hotheaded. Therefore, my sweetheart,
don’t write about these matters openly.

'Yesterday afternoon I went to the
health clinic. A fitter from Ludenscheid was there, and he took my measurements
for a health belt. I had to go to the welfare office and get a certificate for
it. Then I went back to the clinic and had it stamped, and yesterday afternoon
went to the clinic to try it on. The fitter was yet a young man about 30 years
old, and I sure felt embarrassed and ashamed to be in my undergarments while he
took the measurements. There were 12 other expectant mothers there. The clinic
is going to pay 70 percent of the cost of it, and I will have to pay only the
30 percent. I don’t know how I’m going to get something to hold my stockings up
with, because you have to have a good reason whenever you want to buy things
like that.

'I came home on the train at 3:30. Then I drank some coffee and rode
out to the farm. It was almost 8 o’clock and I was just getting ready to plant
some vegetables when all of a sudden it began to rain. We had to run, but we
got wet just the same. Our daughter came at 5 o’clock and asked for a piece of
butter bread and some coffee. She always wants to be where I am. She was out to
the farm with me and picked flowers in Forsters’ meadow. Then she sat down by
the side of the road and tied the flowers into small bundles. Then she noticed
the Russians, which the people are hiring to dig their gardens, and she got
frightened and started to cry and came running to me, and then said “Momma, on
account of the Russians, I lost all my pretty flowers.” I had to laugh and told
her “You little goat, don’t be so scared.” When it stopped raining I wanted to
send her home, but she wouldn’t go alone.

'This evening I have cramps in my
hands. That’s why I can’t write so plain. My fingers hurt a lot and have
blisters on them. In the morning I have to take our daughter to the dentist
because I made an appointment for the 14th of April. Yesterday I met Mrs.
Sonnerkin, who is a midwife, and think I will have her when our baby arrives.
She suggested I have the baby at home instead of in a hospital, because she
could be closer that way, and also the hospital would cost 150 marks, while at
home the clinic would pay for everything, even 35 marks for a nurse. Lena is
going to nurse me, and in case an operation is necessary, Dr. Dimkle will see
that I get to a hospital. Then I wouldn’t have to pay anything. I’ll have it
home, I think. What is your opinion?

'Dear Ewald, I have to close now because it
is 10:30 and we have to leave. Our daughter has to be back at school at 2:30.
Last night the Tommies were overhead again, and they didn’t leave until after
12. Until then, we couldn’t go to bed. It was very bad. Now my super
sweetheart, a thousand kisses from your faithful wife and daughter.'”

"As I
mentioned in the beginning, this letter contained a few more lines and also was
signed. As a thought, as of this writing, if their baby was born in 1944, he or
she would be now 45 years old. Twice as old as many of us were at that time.”

Felix Podolak: You notice, she wrote something in there,
that she was tired and that her hands were, she must have had to work or
something, but she wouldn’t say that she was working hard if you notice. Even
on our ship, our mail was censored by the officers.

There’s an
article in there about us chasing around, and we finally found that cruiser
that was torpedoed by the Germans. It was torpedoed in the bow. Every time it
would go down you’d see a big gust of water like a whale. It was only making a couple
of knots, and we were sent out to pick it up. While we were sent out to pick it
up we didn’t know where, because you’re riding what we call radio silence. We
got as far as the Azores, and the next morning we woke up, the fog lifted, and
the cruiser was right in front of us. He said it had to be divine intervention,
because we traveled more than a thousand miles in three days, and there it was
right in front of us. And we brought it back to Bermuda."

As of this writing, Felix Podolak is 91 years old and still living in Garfield. God bless him.

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Aaron Elson went to a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in 1987. He was so moved by the stories he heard from veterans of the unit with which his father served that he returned two reunions later with a tape recorder. The rest is history. Oral history.